The Cemetery of My Mind: Memories and More

By William Bates

The exorcising of Bill's childhood demons is a heartwarming success story. His youth, while spent avoiding a dysfunctional home, ranged throughout the war years in Niagara-on-the-Lake, getting in and out of more adventures than Tom Sawyer.

A target of a pedophile priest at an early age, Bill has channeled his adult energies into working with victim's outreach programs as well as publicly challenging Church hierarchies to "clean out the decay".

Throughout his memoir is the thread of love - for family; for Niagara-on-the-Lake; and for Joan, his partner in the success of so much of his life. And finally, in the end, we are left with HOPE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483543222

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INTRODUCTION

This little light of mine . . . and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. –Nelson Mandela

If I have a quest and do not share my journey, it is but a lonely journey indeed.

At first I did not even know I had a journey—it was only later that I learned that I had to let this little light shine. It is my firm conviction that we have indeed given others permission to search out their quest.

This book is much more than my history. It is about the journey of my soul and all the souls that gave me the courage to write a book with no experience doing so, a story that only I had to tell and with many friends guiding me.

All sharings encompass risk, courage, and fear. Sharings of the good are a joy.

I cried, I laughed, I thought, I reasoned, we did.

PART ONE

- MY NIAGARA HISTORY -

I learned not to dread problems because it is in the whole process of solving problems that life has meaning.

adapted from M. Scott Peck, Road Less Travelled, p. 16.

THE WAY IT WAS

Wham!

It was the middle of the night. The shock of the bright light woke me. Then, wham! Wham! I was being beaten with a hairbrush. As I struggled to get out of bed: Wham! Across the mouth then, crack! The bottom half of my front tooth, bloodied, toppled from my mouth onto the bed.

My mother, in one of her drunken rages, was assaulting me.

I jumped up, tussled with her, and dragged her back to her own bed. Her wailing remorse awoke my dad, who had been asleep on the couch downstairs.

Dad assessed the situation and produced ice and cloves. This reduced the swelling and stopped the toothache. We all went back to an uneasy sleep. My dad called the dentist first thing in the morning. The dentist installed a temporary cap, but eventually the tooth developed an infection and had to come out. I was left first with a flipper plate, and then a permanent bridge.

Although I was just eleven years old at the time, I had endured quite a few of these bizarre episodes already. But this was the first time my mother had tried to beat me to a pulp. Add to this insult, another type of abuse from a so- called mentor was beginning.

Usually, I was able to restrain her until she tired herself out. Once, though, when I was trying to hold her back as she took a wide swing at me, I toc1ed her hard and heard a snap. My mother’s arm had broken from the force of the blow she aimed at me. From then on, according to her, it was me who broke her arm.

Determination

By the time I was fourteen, Mother’s episodes weighed heavily on my mind and my disposition. One early evening, which concluded a very warm summer’s day, my little brother Lenny and I were waiting for Dad to come home from work. We were going over the river (a term used by both sides for crossing the border) to Lewiston for a late supper—and I got into a shouting fight with Mother. I sure did.

It was useless to try to reason with her. My tamped rage vaulted up, and I bolted out the front door and ran the block down to the river. There, I sprinted up and down the top of the bank in a fit of frustration until I was exhausted; then I slid part way down the bank and must have dozed off.

The next thing I recall was Dad’s voice calling me to the car. I didn’t respond. I wouldn’t. A real stubborn feeling sorry for me streak welled up, and while Dad called repeatedly, pleading for me to answer, I just stiffened myself and let him call.

After my father gave up and left, I sat at the edge of the bank, numb, staring out at Fort Niagara. It was starting to get dark. As the embers of the day slowly dimmed, the lighthouse searchlight brightened to a glare. It held me in a hypnotic trance. I focused on the rhythmic sweeps of light flashing across the Niagara River. They seemed to be searching out the very essence of my being. I went into another world.

Have you ever been lone in body and soul? Not just a normal lonely, but truly lone. I was. I felt like a lone tree growing in a vast desert of loneliness. It was a scary, fear-filled, quaking lone. Imagine the darkest-night-thrown-down-an-even-darker-well lone. That evening, I felt my whole universe drop into a black hole, dragging me with it. I was totally abandoned, without any sight or light.

My mother had repeatedly cursed, damned, and abandoned me. What did I have left? She had stripped the love from my mind. What would it be replaced with? Hate? Remorse? Despair?

Where was Michael, my trusted Guardian Angel? He had been the anchor of my life, but he seemed to have abandoned me, too. I swore at Michael. He must be just a made-up fairy tale like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. I swore at God. He must be a fairy tale, too.

Then, a transformation overtook me. Did this change reflect the determination of my father’s hero, Winston Churchill, who swore to never give in? Maybe. But I like to think it was a response to the culmination of all that I had experienced in my young life, all that was threatening and negative.

My spirit just rebelled, retching from the guts of my soul, and, suddenly, my depressed rage was changed into an erupting volcanic power of determination. I vowed that never again would anyone hurt me. Not my mother. Not that other Stockholm Syndrome adult who kept me gripped in an even deeper, more frightening secret. In that moment, I was imbued with a subtle but magnetically powerful strength and peace. Somehow, I just knew that I would now have the ability to overcome any adversity.

This seemed an answer to my angry prayers, so, at first, I thought my experience was similar to that which I had learned occurs to the saints when they are given the gift of redemption. But unbeknownst to this fourteen-year old, as I perched on the bank overlooking Fort Niagara, my own redemption would have to wait for many years.

Still, between sweeps of the lighthouse’s powerful beam, something inside me had changed. I had been given a gift, not of redemption, but of determination, the determination that I would need to survive. And I definitely needed this gift to survive the prejudices, judgments, and nightmares that were to litter my life.

I know that when a mother’s love is withdrawn, a scar remains in one’s heart forever.

When a disguised evil invades the soul, the penetrating scar-pain shakes one’s entire being to the very root of faith.

Sparing the Rod

Life is surely in the eye of the beholder, but one’s perceptions of it are influenced by those surrounding one. Thus, as an adult, I can now look back and perceive those Niagara years quite differently than the way I experienced them at the time. As a young child, my understanding of what was normal was defined by the adults—family members and others—around me. As I grew older, it was my friends who had the greater influence on me. And when I became a father, myself, I had to revise my perceptions yet again.

But during my Niagara, at-home years, all I knew was that I was bad; that if there was discord, it was my fault. My mother, if she did not create this perception entirely, certainly reinforced it by repeatedly saying that she had been a very different person—a happier one, I assumed from her tone—before I was born.

As difficult as this it-was-my-fault/I-am-bad attitude made my early life, I was not alone in feeling this way. Other children, too, were disciplined to make the little buggers obey like robotic soldiers.

Although in my house it was my mother who did the punishing, in most homes, it was the fathers who meted out the justice. For example, Friend A had the devil exorcised from him with a horsewhip. Friend B would become penitent after repeated lashes of the belt or bashes with the fist. Friend C would recant after several strokes of the rubber strop.

The mandate Spare the rod and spoil the child was commonly cited. The rod, usually a thick yardstick, was applied by fathers when deemed necessary. Mothers, on the other hand, tended toward the use of a wooden spoon or hairbrush banged against a rear end after repeated warnings had been given.

Despite my mother’s physical expressions of anger, I can remember my father slapping me only once—and that was clearly in response to me and my big mouth overstepping the line.

As a child, I was unable to understand the rights and wrongs of the complicated system of crime and punishment that I was growing up amidst. Like all children of abuse, particularly those of alcoholic parents, I was confused. So I shoved as much of it as I could—my faults, my denials, my justifications, and my unworthy feelings—into the cemetery of my mind until they festered there and eventually erupted.

When a child is subject to physical, sexual, and/or mental abuse, those experiences form the foundation for the person’s continuing dysfunction: simply put, children to whom evil is done respond with anger in return.

It was not until I was older, a parent myself, that I was able to unravel the web of abusive experiences with which my childhood had been inculcated. But before the unraveling could begin, I had to admit that I had problems, problems which I could no longer control.

I believe that we are born for a reason, for what the Church says is our calling. Whatever my reason for being, Niagara-on-the-Lake was my nemesis. I had to escape in order to find myself and live out my destiny. As much adventure as misadventure, my journey from those at-home Niagara years has followed a steep learning curve.

From Dale Carnegie classes I understood that the most important thing a person possesses is his name. And from someone else I learned we never forget the place where we are born. Together, birthplace and name become a reference point for us, a foundational concept about who we are.

***

I was born in Niagara-on-the-Lake. I almost died there. I became a survivor there. And even now I can hear the voices of my experiences calling, in contrast to the town’s yearly two and a half million visitors viewing it as simply quaint or charming.

Some treasured memories of my time there have faded and now are hard to recall. Other precious memories have been destroyed – as the sadness of loss lingers still. Some still-tough memories scorch as I touch on them. But all keep calling from my past.

The Cemetery of My Mind is my story – my life as I remember it.

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE

YE OLDE TOWN WHERE CANADA BEGAN

Winston Churchill considered the Niagara area, from Fort Erie to Niagara-on-the-Lake, the prettiest scenic spot in the world. The millions of visitors who make Niagara their destination each year agree with Churchill and understand just how unique this town is.

Located at the mouth of the Niagara River, which borders the United States, and only ten miles from Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, also bounded by Lake Ontario, is a peninsula. Boasting many Canadian firsts—including first Parliament, first library, and first museum—as well as the Underground Railroad, Niagara-on-the-Lake is listed among the most historic towns in Canada.

First known as Newark, Niagara-on-the-Lake was founded on Masonic principles and was home to such prominent Masons as Governor John Graves Simcoe, who convened the first Parliament of Upper Canada, and John Butler of Butler’s Rangers. Indeed, the rigid roots of the Empire were transplanted into the soil of this newly conquered territory, establishing British heritage as the cornerstone of Upper Canada.

The town’s signature is the Cenotaph, a clock tower that stands sentinel at the center of Queen Street and represents those townsmen who died fighting socialist dictators in Europe.

Considered a monument dedicated to freedom, for me, the tower is actually a giant, redbrick tombstone. My Uncle Jack Dietsch’s name is engraved on that tower and, to me, that is his gravestone. I think of Uncle Big Jack every time I pass the clock, and every time I hear it bong, memories flash across my mind, memories that put the Cenotaph at the very center of The Cemetery of My Mind.

Neighboring the tower, period stores line the main street. One, the Niagara Apothecary, which stands at the corner of King and Queen Streets, is the oldest drug store in Ontario.

The stores are not the only vestiges of times gone by, though. Crazy King George’s England contributed two forts to the town, one in 1799 and one in 1814. The first, Fort George, is a wooden structure now rebuilt to its original majesty. The second, Fort Mississauga, is a unique brick and plaster structure built from the rubble resulting from the fire of Newark caused by the Americans on December 10th, 1813. The only five-star Canadian fort, Mississauga spreads across more than three acres on Point Mississauga, close to the edge of Lake Ontario, and is ringed by a fifteen-foot moat. Some say the fort’s roof was designed to allow for the firing of an internal, rotating cannon.

Although Fort Mississauga is now closed, it is surrounded by the oldest golf course in North America. Fort Mississauga faces both the Niagara River and Lake Ontario, while Fort George is turned towards the river, and both are but a cannon shot from the elegant, mid-eighteenth century stone castle, which is the United States’ Fort Niagara.

Outside the historic town lies lush farmland where grapes, cherries, peaches, nectarines, and a medley of other fruits and vegetables grow. In fact, the area has so many award winning wineries it is often referred to as the Napa of the North.

Truly, then, Niagara-on-the-Lake would seem a sort of historical paradise, a place so unique the fantasies of Walt Disney could not match it. But beneath the beauty lies a tension so dark, even the horrors of Steven King could not meet them.

And there you have it: my town, my life, is built from equal parts of these.

NIAGARA VERY EARLY CHILDHOOD

Maw’s House

VICTORIA STREET, 1938-1946

When an egg allows a sperm to enter, together they immediately form a zygote. The energy created at this nanosecond is akin to the initial reaction of an atomic bomb. Indeed, it is an atomic-level reaction. In my mind, I consider this instant the birth of the soul. This phenomenal reaction keeps the cells dividing and sub-dividing until death—that moment when all that original spirit energy is released into a different form.

Since I was born on June 24th, 1938, my own atomic-reaction moment must have been sometime in the early fall of 1937, bringing me along just before World War II.

Fortunately for me, my maternal grandmother, whom we called Maw, was a bit of a nuclear reactor herself: a four-foot-something, one-hundred pound love reactor. She generated a radiating kindness to everyone who came into contact with her. For me in particular, she was my special, one-person caring dynamo. And I needed her.

While I longed for my own mother’s smile (and remember each time she did smile at me), my brothers and I only sporadically received either a smile or a twinkle from our mother’s eyes or warmth from her voice. Sure, I remember a few times when her laughing smile dispelled my tears, but sadly, I remember a lot of bad stuff more.

I’ve been told that Mom and Dad had been out partying just before I was born, so it seems probable that I came into this world with a hangover. I certainly used to cry a lot. This could have been from alcohol withdrawal or from the fact that she didn’t bond with me. My mother had her own drummer—and it clearly wasn’t me.

That’s why Maw was so important to me. Maw ended up with nineteen grandchildren, and gave each and every one of us a special piece of her spiritual energy, but when I was with her, it was like I was her only grandchild.

Maw and me

In one of my first memories, Maw is filling a large galvanized washtub with warm water for two little tykes, my cousin Donna and me. We were to sit in our own private spa. The hot summer sun is flickering with a soft breeze through the hollyhocks, producing a dance of white, red, and pink blossoms along the pale green stems that stretch up the side of the white garage. A hummingbird darts in and out of the flowers; the pail is pouring; Maw is singing, This is the way we wash our chickadees: Splash, splash, and giggles as she splashes us.

Our Garage - Our Spa

Water sparkles before our enchanted eyes. In the magic of the moment, Maw’s smile and laughter are magnified, creating a circle of love around this slice of innocent heaven.

Our galvanized spa was placed in the backyard of a magnificent, ten-room, white, wood-frame house, circa-1880, located on Victoria Street. It was just a dozen kicks of the can from Queens Royal Beach. Maw had bought the house for herself and her extended family.

It was a church-blessed house. Fear and hope were both instilled in us by the religious pictures and crucifixes that adorned the walls. When Maw would put us to bed, she would instruct us in the proper way to say our prayers. First, she would tease us by sometimes speaking them in lilting Gaelic, which sounded like spiritual music to my young ears. Then she would repeat them in English, telling us to always include a special prayer to our own particular saint or guardian angel.

Donna’s saint was St. Teresa, who helped little girls. My guardian angel was St. Michael the Archangel, protector of children and defender of God. I never tired of hearing Maw tell me how Michael beat up on the Devil’s angels, and I felt very special having this hero available to guard me.

In addition to our night-time prayers, Maw also gave us special prayer cards to connect us with our guardians. My card featured a young boy with a large, kind-looking angel standing behind him. I was enthralled with this picture and kept it next to my bed. It was clear to me that the boy in the picture was me, and that Archangel Michael would always have my back.

In addition to these more typically Catholic spiritual helpers, Maw also hosted a full complement of Irish entities of superstition. This meant that gonies, banshees, and guardian angels all cohabited with the families and friends who lived there.

And then there was the flag. A star flag hung in our window. This confused me, because, unlike all the other symbols in the house, it seemed to bring Maw sadness. Visiting soldiers would stand at attention and salute the flag, and Donna and I would mimic them, but we didn’t really understand why.

When I finally asked Maw, What is that flag? she answered, with choking tears, that it was my Uncle Big Jack’s memorial flag.

That Victoria Street house, with Maw as matriarch, was an open house, holding many people close. But it harbored strife, tension, fear, anger, sadness, too—and me. For this was my home, from shortly after my birth until I was eight years old, in those in-between years, those mostly war years, from 1938 until 1946.

Maw and Pop

Maw tried to fill all of us grandkids with the love we were missing from our own parents, but she was only one for so many. And, from what I can see looking back, it seems obvious that she had her own demons to deal with. In writing this story, I tried to learn as much as I could both about Maw and about my mother’s father, but met with only limited success.

This is what I discovered:

Maw’s husband, my grandfather Emile Dietsch, was born in a tiny village called Grishenheim, outside Colmar, Alsace, France. From a very large family, he was one of at least a dozen children, all of whom were born in a one-bedroom cottage. As was the practice in that village at the time, the babies slept on the main floor as infants. When there was no more room, the biggest of the little ones were sent to sleep in the attic. When the attic became too crowded, the Dietschs, like others, would ship their oldest boy to America.

That’s how it was for Emile, who, towards the end of the 1800s, at the age of ten, immigrated to the United States to live with his older brother in the American Midwest.

For her part, Maw, born Margaret Kelly, fled the Irish Famine with her parents. Her family established itself in Toronto, Canada, where Great-grandpa Kelly worked for the City of Toronto. (I have a picture of my great-grandparents Kelly in which I am told Great-grandpa Kelly is blind.)

I have heard varying stories of how Maw and Emile, whom we always called Pop, met. And while I cannot even guess which of these might be correct, I do know that Maw was his second wife, and that his first wife died, and that Maw took on not just Pop, but his young daughter, Mamie, too. I also know that Pop gave Maw a clock, dated 1900, as a wedding present. (I know, because I own that clock now.)

From there, Maw and Pop’s life leaps off into a half-dozen different versions—amid which lies the truth. It is certain that Pop was a chef. Maw once showed me an invitation for a gala event for Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier to be held at the Royal York Hotel Toronto. According to the invitation, Grand Chef Emile Paul Dietsch coordinated the banquet.

But one of my uncles maintained that Pop was the inventor of Honey Dew Orange, a drink that was extremely popular at the Toronto National Exhibition—and was also a great mixer for bathtub gin during the 1920s prohibition; a different uncle said that Pop earned millions and owned a block on Bay Street, in the financial district of Toronto—until his partner stole all the money and fled to South American, leaving Pop bankrupt.

Not so, my brother Doug says. His version is that Pop became partners with a lawyer and bought the Ford Hotel. Then, when Pop died, probably of alcoholism, the lawyer got the best of the deal. But Maw fought her way to at least a portion of Pop’s holdings and used that money to bankroll her real-estate career of buying houses, fixing them up, and flipping them. Cousin Jim Goode agrees about the Ford Hotel, but says it burnt down, and Pop did not have insurance.

Ultimately, we do know that Pop died in Beamsville, of pneumonia caught because he did not have a winter coat. But before he died, my grandparents had six more children, making seven in all.

Mother

The first rule of our family concerned secrets: We hid them. Even though others may have already known our secrets, we were not to speak of them. Not even to each other. Instead we were to ignore anything that was not as it was supposed to be—in our own family and in everybody else’s family, too. I can’t remember being taught this. It seems that I always just knew it. For instance, I knew to talk about my mother as a very special person at my dad’s store. This continued even after she stopped going in to work.

There must have been a time when my mother was happy and gay, because her family nickname was Irish, after the song When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. When Irish eyes are smiling/Sure, it’s like a morning spring, my uncles used to sing to her, so she must have smiled a lot when she was growing up with them.

Even in her grown-up years, Mother put on a gregarious face for the world at large. And early in my own life, Mom did have what seemed to be genuine extended periods of sobriety and kindness, during which, she offered me what passed for the love that I hungered for. One precious memory I have from back then has sustained me through a lot of uglier moments: It was a beautiful, sunny, June day. I was just a toddler, and Mom and I were skipping the three blocks to Dad’s store. As we held hands, skipping and giggling, she sang, Skip to My Lou, My Darling. I have treasured this little crumb of my childhood for many years, and wish there were more such moments to hold onto.

One secret that could not be kept, though, was Mother’s lack of care for her children’s cleanliness. When Maw was around, we kids were clean and presentable. But when she wasn’t, we looked like street urchins.

When I was nine, I received an early birthday present. My baby brother Lenny arrived. This is when Dad got some help at the store so he could help out more at home. Now he could cut his hours to fifty plus per week.

Dad did the laundry, we emptied the dirty diapers, sloshed them in the toilet and put the wet remains in a pail for Dad to launder. Dad tried to steal time from the store and came home to make dinner. We made our own breakfast and lunch and dinner, when Dad couldn’t get there. I ate out as much as possible, just to get out of the house when Dad was working.

I slept in the same room with my Lenny in his crib. He was about two or more. It was early morning when I felt a whack on my head. I looked up to see that my angry brother had thrown his empty bottle at me. It was time to get up, change him and fill that bottle.

Strangely enough I felt like a responsible grown up. I had taken over what Doug had done for me. Len was my responsibility. This was magnified when Jack moved to Toronto and Doug went off to cut tobacco.

I usually knew where my Dad was, but only too often my Mother’s mind was somewhere else. I suspect she was dealing with her demon.

I wish for my children and grandchildren to understand that writing about my Mother was not an easy task. After all I had only one mother. First I had to go through a kaleidoscope of feelings. I felt like I was rejected, dejected, in fact I felt abandoned. I had to deal with my feelings of anger bordering on rage, regret, and remorse, even blaming her for everything bad that happened to me.

When I was proof reading my eighth draft everything came together.

Being very sentimental, I will often get tears in my eyes when watching sad movies. When I got that ah-ah moment, I was hit with teary mist that enhanced my vision.

It was through both a TV ad and then a movie when I got the revelation that put my mother in her proper perspective.

It was sometime in June 2014, that I saw a Florida ad on T.V. from placeofhope.com. It took me a few seconds to figure out that this ad was about me. It hit deep into my heart!

It is about two very wholesome looking brothers. The younger is about six. The older is around eleven or twelve. The camera focuses on a stark light bulb, then the youngster’s face as his brother helps him wake up. The camera pans the mattress on the floor, two toothbrushes on a not so clean washcloth, a toy dinosaur, the messy shelves and the pot of water on the stove. I am into it when the younger beams with pride as the older one washes him, then finishes dressing him. The sweater goes on with loving care as it pops over his head. He angelically smiles with admiration as the older brother fixes his hair. The last shot that really does it is of the two of them, back packs full of books, the older brother leading the way, the younger one playfully by his side as they start off to school. This is all to the back ground music of Five Hundred Miles.

The caption reads Neglect followed by the next scene Not all child abuse is obvious.

It is left up to the viewer to ask, Why is the older one taking on this parental role? Where is the Mother? The Father?

I first related to it that the older boy in the ad was Doug and the younger one me. In thinking about it further, I realized that as time passed, the roles changed. I took Doug’s role and Len took mine. I know that siblings may fight among themselves, but most have a protective nature for the ones more vulnerable.

It was July